She began to spy upon him, to make a study of his usual hours for going out, the streets he passed through, the places that he visited. She followed him to Batignolles, to his new quarters, walked behind him, content to put her foot where he had put his, to be guided by his steps, to see him now and then, to notice a gesture that he made, to snatch one of his glances. That was all: she dared not speak to him; she kept at some distance behind, like a lost dog, happy not to be driven away with kicks.
For weeks and weeks she made herself thus the man's shadow, a humble, timid shadow that shrank back and moved away a few steps when it thought it was in danger of being seen; then drew nearer again with faltering steps, and, at an impatient movement from the man, stopped once more, as if asking pardon.
Sometimes she waited at the door of a house which he entered, caught him up again when he came out and escorted him home, always at a distance, without speaking to him, with the air of a beggar begging for crumbs and thankful for what she was allowed to pick up. Then she would listen at the shutters of the ground-floor apartment in which he lived, to ascertain if he was alone, if there was anybody there.
When he had a woman on his arm, although she suffered keenly, she was the more persistent in following him. She went where they went to the end. She entered the public gardens and ballrooms behind them. She walked within sound of their laughter and their words, tore her heart to tatters looking at them and listening to them, and stood at their backs with every jealous instinct of her nature bleeding.
LVII
It was November. For three or four days Germinie had not fallen in with Jupillon. She went to hover about his lodgings, watching for him. When she reached the street on which he lived, she saw a broad beam of light struggling out through the closed shutters. She approached and heard bursts of laughter, the clinking of glasses, women's voices, then a song and one voice, that of the woman whom she hated with all the hatred of her heart, whom she would have liked to see lying dead before her, and whose death she had so often sought to discover in the coffee-grounds,—the cousin!
She glued her ear to the shutter, breathing in what they said, absorbed in the torture of listening to them, pasturing her famished heart upon suffering. It was a cold, rainy winter's night. She did not feel the cold or rain. All her senses were engaged in listening. The voice she detested seemed at times to grow faint and die away beneath kisses, and the notes it sang died in her throat as if stifled by lips placed upon the song. The hours passed. Germinie was still at her post. She did not think of going away. She waited, with no knowledge of what she was waiting for. It seemed to her that she must remain there always, until the end. The rain fell faster. The water from a broken gutter overhead beat down upon her shoulders. Great drops glided down her neck. An icy shiver ran up and down her back. The water dripped from her dress to the ground. She did not notice it. She was conscious of no pain in any of her limbs except the pain that flowed from her heart.
Well on toward morning there was a movement in the house, and footsteps approached the door. Germinie ran and hid in a recess in the wall some steps away, and from there saw a woman come out, escorted by a young man. As she watched them walk away, she felt something soft and warm on her hands that frightened her at first; it was a dog licking her, a great dog that she had held in her lap many an evening, when he was a puppy, in the crémière's back shop.
"Come here, Molosse!" Jupillon shouted impatiently twice or thrice in the darkness.